Despite recently announced delays in China’s requirement to include Green Dam anti-pornography software on new PCs, the initiative is far from dead. PC makers who unanimously decried the hasty July 1st deadline managed to buy themselves an extension, but are still being told they to comply with the new requirements. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology re-affirmed its commitment to Green Dam Youth Escort on Thursday, and claims that it sees the software as being an important tool for protecting young people from pornography and violence on the internet. To further reinforce its commitment to total penetration, software publisher Jinhui has been told to write a Mac OSX version of the software, and it is currently in beta testing.

Critics of the Green Dam filtering software continue to question the motivation behind the initiative, and have accused the Ministry of using the software to further political repression. This may be a valid concern when you consider that the Ministry in charge of Green Dam’s implantation is also responsible for suppressing illegal political activity. The situation for the Chinese gets even worse when you consider that several industry tests have shown multiple security vulnerabilities in the filtering software, and it even appears to have a high occurrence of false positives in the filtering algorithm. The vulnerabilities are considered so serious in fact, that Sony is including a disclaimer with all new PCs.

Good question, I was wondering the same. To add on to that question, what about people who build their own computers?

Without turning this into a religious debate, I would like to point out that during the dark ages the world wasn't technically ruled by religion, it was ruled by powerful feudal lords who in my view used religion to their advantage. The same is true here, except China's government is athiest and is intent on controlling its populace. I believe eventually freedom will come to China but it must come from Western standards and timelines but rather from the people of China. I believe the speech in V for Vendetta (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2qtb8_v-for-vendetta-televised-speech-dis_politics) is something the people there need to hear.